Cloud Atlas Review: Yellowface And Orientalism

3) Did they have to do this racial masquerade at all?  I understand that they wanted to have the theme of eternal recurrence, but since they made such a big deal about the characters in all 6 vignettes having the same comet birthmark, it seems like they could have emphasized THAT feature in all of the characters that are said to “recur” in the 6 different segments.  And/or isn’t it possible that Neo Seoul is a cosmopolitan place where there are white and mixed race people?  They didn’t change David Keith’s skin color when he played a Korean resistance fighter–they just taped back his eyes and put him in white robes.  Seems like they could have simply had him be a black man in Neo Seoul and/or they could have also just kept Bae Doona as the 19th-century wife in SF with Hugo Weaving as her father.  They do this in theater all the time–you just suspend belief because you know this is artificial so why strain things to make a character “look” like the appropriate “race” according to the narrative when they can just play that character?  I know, film is different than theater, but Louis CK has had different women playing his ex-wife, including an African American actress.  Seems like they could have been more imaginative in this department.

4) This last issue isn’t a yellowface issue, it’s an Asian vs. Asian American issue.  Since the characters in the Neo Seoul segment are all speaking in English (many with a British accent, for some reason), why did the filmmakers cast a Chinese and a Korean actress in roles that they could have cast Asian American actresses in?  I have nothing against either Xun Zhou or Bae Doona, but verisimilitude doesn’t seem to be top on the Wachowski’s agenda (see my above point about using African American actors to portray Polynesians) and if it was for the Neo Seoul segment, why cast a Chinese actress–why not find two Korean actresses?  There doesn’t seem to be a clear logic in the casting decisions of which actors are playing which characters.

So leaving aside the problem of yellowface (and I do think it’s a problem–as Anthony Lane says in his New Yorker movie review, the use of yellowface “sure as hell doesn’t work here, inching beyond embarassment into insult” and others are also protestingthe yellowface as well), the other issue I found disturbing in Cloud Atlas was its depiction of Asian women.  In the novel, female fabricants come in various “models”–there’s a Sonmi model and a Yoona model.  They have the same face/body but are designated with different numbers: Sonmi-451 and Yoona 939.  I believe in the novel there are 3 different models who are servers at a restaurant.  But in the film, the actresses are actually played by different women who are made to look like they are cloned.  In other words, rather than using CGI to depict the women in the restaurant looking the same, the film used various Asian female extras, gave them the same haircut, put them in the same skimpy outfits, and then said that they were all the same.

In other words, the film seems to be counting on audiences not recognizing Asian female distinction and difference–they are expecting audiences to just believe that different Asian female extras actually all “look” the same–look like one another.  And apparently websites describing the film are also confused about the distinctiveness and individuality of various Asian women since they have confused the film’s two Asian female actresses with random Asian extras from the film.  For example:

This is the Chinese actress Xun Zhou who plays Yoona-939 (couldn’t find a still from the film, but this is taken from the movie’s premiere)